The 2016 presidential race has finally reached the point where I am hoping and praying for SMOD 2016 to win the election. For those of you unfamiliar with SMOD, it's the Sweet Meteor of Death, a meteor of extinction level power that would spell the end of every life on earth. It's the candidate we deserve.

Sarah Palin

Case in point, yesterday former GOP VP candidate and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, disturbed that we hadn't been talking about her for the past 6 months, came out and endorsed Donald Trump.

Now, I've never been a big Sarah Palin fan, but I defended her in 2008 against attacks by the media on her fitness to be one heartbeat away from the presidency. Not that I thought she was necessarily qualified to be vice president, but she was more qualified to be VP than Sen. Barack Obama was to be president. It was the media's willful and abject failure to apply a consistent standard that prompted most of my defenses of her.

I don't know if yesterday's endorsement will help Trump in Iowa or any other state, but for Tea Party conservatives, Palin has trashed what little remains of her own brand. Donald Trump is in no way shape or form a conservative. It's almost mind-blowing that in her endorsement speech, Palin would include the following, considering who she was standing next to:

The permanent political class has been doing the bidding of their campaign donor class, and that’s why you see that the borders are kept open,” Palin said. “For them, for their cheap labor that they want to come in. That’s why they’ve been bloating budgets for crony capitalists to be able to suck off of them.

Trump is the living embodiment of crony capitalism. He brags about how successful he is at the crony capitalism game.

I'm through defending Sarah Palin against anything anyone throws at her, no matter how vile.

Hillary Clinton's server

Drowned out by Caribou Barbie yesterday was news that the Intelligence Community Inspector General had found emails on Hillary Clinton's homebrew server that were more secret than top secret. The contents of these emails were so secret that the IG himself had to get a higher security clearance just to look at them.

"There should be no bank too big to fail and no individual too big to jail." —Hillary #DemDebate

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) January 18, 2016

Well, this should put that claim to the test. Gen. David Petraeus, who illegally shared classified information with his biographer (and mistress), was prosecuted, sentenced to 2 years probation and a $100k fine is now potentially facing a post-retirement demotion as well. Hillary Clinton continues to brush off any questions that there's a good prima facie case that she broke the same laws.

Evangelicals and Trump Pt. Deux

My facebook acquaintance who prompted my previous post on Evangelicals and Donald Trump responded to my comment on his post touting TV personality and car modder Jesse James endorsement of Trump. I pointed out that Trump is no Christian, which prompted my acquaintance to liken Trump to Jesus Christ and people who point out that he's not a Christian (like me) to Pharisees.

Trump says he's never asked God for forgiveness for his sins. When it comes to becoming a Christian, asking God for forgiveness is the equivalent of Alcoholics Anonymous' Step 1: Acknowledging you have a problem. Without this acknowledgement of his own fallen nature, it's pretty clear that Trump believes that he can bridge the rift between a perfect sinless God and broken man without Jesus Christ. Trump rejects Galatians 2:21:

 I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!

The proper view of politicians

The better part of a decade ago, I spent a couple hours having drinks and talking with National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru. Ramesh had become familiar with me through my regular takedowns of New York Times columnist Paul Krugman during the Bush administration and he was in San Diego to hop on a ship for one of those National Review cruises. We talked a lot about politics and one of the questions he asked me was if I liked George W. Bush.

My response was something along the lines of shrugging my shoulders and "Meh, he's OK."

Unlike too many Americans, I have never seen any politician as a kind of savior-figure. There's one person in this world who is 100 percent right on every political issue. I see him in the mirror every morning and he's not running for office.

Politicians are public servants. They're not heroes. They're not champions battling mightily for the common good. We should look at their jobs like just about every job Mike Rowe did on "Dirty Jobs," but with far less respect.

It's why the attacks on Texas Sen. Ted Cruz that he has no friends in the Senate have no bite. Not being friends with the likes of Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein or even John McCain and Mitch McConnell are good things.

I don't think either President Bush ever got the savior treatment from his supporters. After leaving office Ronald Reagan did—I'm a little too young to remember if he did while in office. Barack Obama certainly has. Neither McCain nor Mitt Romney did. This time around Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are getting that they-can-do-no-wrong treatment from their supporters.

Mixing celebrity worship with politicians is like mixing an olde circus freak show with a meth lab—it's ugly and dangerous.

Hoystory endorses

So, what's the solution? SMOD. Vote SMOD 2016.